You'll find plenty of diets that promise to, and sometimes even make good on, helping you to lose weight quickly. But the fact of the matter is that studies have shown 95% of diets fail and lost weight is often gained back in just a year. [1] Such diets can also be torturous and leave your body feeling weak and gross. If you want to lose weight and really keep it off, you need to make adjustments to how you live, like introducing portion control and exercise. WikiHow can help you take control of your weight and start shedding pounds with this healthy weight-loss strategy. Just get started with Step 1 to get on your way to looking slim and healthy!

Ad

Steps

1

Understand the importance of your decision to lose weight to live longer and feel healthier. Even losing a few pounds will improve how you feel mentally and physically. There is no quick-fix, but this plan will get you shedding pounds sooner than you think. Remember not to think too much, otherwise you will never act in losing the weight.

Ad

2

Watch your calorie intake. To do this in an organized way, keep a daily online journal of everything you eat. There, you can enter your weight loss goals and any activities you do. You can also keep a notebook journal of all your information.

3

Plan to do some exercise - in the beginning, anything will get you started. Take walks after meals, do yoga, try some stretching, go swimming, or ride a bicycle instead of driving to get around and run errands. Aim to burn 500 calories per day through exercise.

4

Eat about six (small) meals each day. Eating more often, but fewer calories, will boost your metabolism and still lower your intake.

5

Plan to eat 1200-1500 calories per day. You do not need to go hungry with this amount of food. It may help to think in terms of eating 200-250 calories per meal. While this is not a lot of food in terms of pork rinds, it is a lot in terms of spinach. See this guide for a week's worth of 1200-calorie per day menus. In this stage, there is no need to be concerned with how many carbohydrates or how much fat you consume. Just watch your calories!

Think about how little food your body needs to survive and be healthy. The rest is excess and you don't need it. Over time, you will realize that you don't want to eat extra food. Always stop eating when you are full. Use small plates for your food.

6

Keep a recent photo on the fridge to remind you of the weight you want to lose. try not to keep checking your weight as you will not notice a significant difference and this will turn you off.

7

Completely eliminate chips, candy and soda, and high calorie foods. Choose to eat fruit for snacks and substitute water for beverages.

8

Realize the calorie content of your favorite foods. If these foods are too high in calories, find foods you like that are lower in calories and eat them instead. Refuse to compromise.

9

Remember to always love yourself and not care about what others think or say! Be yourself you don't have to be skinny just because everyone else is!!! Do it because YOU want to lose the weight, not because people laugh at you!

10

Pay attention to the portions of food you eat, don't eat from a huge plate try something smaller.

11

Make sure that you weigh yourself weekly. Do this at the same time every week, preferably in the morning as your weight can change throughout the day. Remember to take the weight of your clothes into consideration.

12

Keep a journal on your food habit.

13

Make exercise social, go for a run with your friends, or a bike ride with your family.

14

And NEVER skip breakfast, it's the most important meal of the day, and it gives you energy so you can work out.

15

Exercise! Do ab workouts at least 3 times a week

16

STICK TO AN EXERCISE ROUTINE!

Ad

We could really use your help!

Can you tell us about

Writing Implements?

Yes

No

Can you tell us about

water collection?

Yes

No

Can you tell us about

home construction?

Yes

No

Can you tell us about

amplifiers?

Yes

No

Thanks for helping! Please tell us everything you know about

...

Tell us everything you know here. Remember, more detail is better.

Tips

Provide details.

Please be as detailed as possible in your explanation. We will take your detailed information, edit it for clarity and accuracy, and incorporate it into an article that will help thousands of people.Don't say: Eat more fats.Do say: Add fats with some nutritional value to the foods you already eat. Try olive oil, butter, avocado, and mayonnaise.

Tips

While sticking to an exercise routine is good, do not do the same exercises every day, or else your body will become used to it and burn less calories. Vary your types of exercise!

Don't ever exercise without stretching first because you could seriously injure yourself. If that happens you will have to stop exercising until it fully heals. This would not be good for your weight loss routine.

Using stairs instead of elevators is also one of the easiest things you could include in your routine.

Don't skip snacks! Eating continuously keeps your metabolism up and running. But make sure you only eat healthy, if you eat fatty foods you metabolism will not keep up with you.

Have lots of confidence in yourself.

Warnings

Don't ever starve yourself to lose weight - you can make yourself extremely sick. Your body needs food to get all the nutrients that give you energy. Also, if you skip meals, your body will take the next piece of food you eat and store it as fat!

Don't use laxatives to get rid of extra weight. It doesn't work and will only make you sick and/or constipated.

The best way to annoy friends is to constantly talk about your diet and the foods you can and can't eat. Follow your diet, bring it up when necessary, but don't drag everyone into it.

Share

Featured Articles

Meet a Community Member

Meet Adelaide, a wikiHowian who has been a community member for over two years and has written many articles. She enjoys reaching out to new people and doing new article review/boosting, and she also helps a lot of people through the Help Team. Most of all, she enjoys attending meetups; having been to two meetups thus far, she feels that they're a blast and she has always left with many happy memories! Her proudest accomplishment on wikiHow has been taking a step further in the world, i.e. helping and educating people all over the world with her articles and edits. When it comes to the wikiHow community, Adelaide loves the collaborative spirit and says it’s nice to see so many like-minded editors sharing advice and helping the content grow. To new contributors, she advises, “Edit fearlessly and boldly, try a few editing tools, and don’t be afraid to ask questions! We're always here to help".